A cell culture device is known from WO 2007/039600 A1, which describes a culture vessel of a bioreactor in which there is situated a culture zone external to an internal medium transfer channel. The cells are situated in the culture zone, which is a sort of basket comprising carriers. This device further comprises culture medium circulation means, allowing a circulation of the culture medium through the culture zone and the transfer zone, and an optical sensor element for measuring a culture parameter of the cell culture. This device can be disposable thus eliminating complications caused by sterilization.
Another type of culture device is known from EP 1 333 085 A2 which describes a culture vessel of small size, with a first chamber containing a cell culture zone with substrate means for cell attachment, and a second chamber connected to the first chamber to facilitate the culture medium to flow freely between the first and the second chamber through the cell culture zone. This device can be disposable thus eliminating complications caused by sterilization and is capable of intermittently provide oxygen and nutrients to cells by controlling the amount of culture medium that comes into contact with the growth substrate means in the cell culture zone.
Ducommun et al. (Biotechnology and bioengineering, Vol. 77, No 3, Feb. 5, 2002) describes the use of a biomass (cell density) probe into a fixed bed bioreactors. The probe Biomass Monitor® 214M used is commercially available and is a pencil-shaped-type probe incorporating four electrodes. The use of this type of probe is typically performed by fitting the pencil-shaped probe in an aperture of the lid of a rigid culture vessel (here made of stainless steel and/or glass). This type of culture vessel, whether made of glass or stainless steel, have as a main characteristic, the rigidity of their walls and the consistency of all their dimensions. This is of high importance for the implementation of biomass probes based on capacitance. Such a probe works by applying a low current RF field to the biomass immobilised within 20 to 25 mm of the four electrodes of the sensor. In this system according to the prior art, the rigidity of the walls permit to avoid that the position of the probe could be modified and thereby the packing of the fixed bed be modified. Such rigid culture vessels makes the device comprising them expensive. This increases the cost of the device and imposes a recycling of the culture vessel which itself imposes expensive washing and sterilisation steps.